Anwar verdict resets Malaysian
politics By Simon Roughneen
KUALA LUMPUR - A not-guilty verdict in a
sex scandal case against Malaysian opposition
leader Anwar Ibrahim could prove a game-changer in
the run-up to elections due by 2013 but thought by
many analysts to be held this year.
After
months of railing against what he deemed
trumped-up and politicized charges, Anwar cut an
understandably cheerful and relieved dash on
Monday morning when speaking to perhaps 3,000
supporters outside the Kuala Lumpur court where he
was acquitted of charges of sodomizing a male
party aide in 2008. Sodomy is a criminal offense
punishable by 20 years in prison in Malaysia,
where Muslim citizens are subject to sharia
law.
The case, which has hung over the
country's political scene for
over three years, represented
the second time Anwar faced such charges. He was
acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Anwar thanked
God for the not-guilty verdict, telling reporters,
"We must focus on the next general elections and
the reform agenda. We hope for an independent
judiciary and free media."
Supporters,
some of whom donned Anwar masks outside the court
building, chanted "reformasi" and "long live
Anwar".
The 64-year-old opposition leader
was accompanied by his wife, Wan Azizah Wan
Ismail, and daughter, Nurul Izzah Anwar, both
prominent politicians in their own right. The
post-verdict celebrations were curbed by three
small explosions that injured several protesters
and damaged cars parked outside the court. Nobody
took responsibility for the blasts.
The
unexplained explosions underscored to some the
growing polarization of Malaysian politics,
pitting the ruling United Malays Nasional
Organization (UMNO) against Anwar's opposition
Pakatan Rakyat coalition.
UMNO, the
country's largest political party, which has ruled
uninterrupted since post-colonial independence
through its multi-ethnic Barisan Nasional (BN)
coalition, is struggling to portray itself as a
force for change ahead of the upcoming polls. Some
analysts believe the decision in Anwar's favor
could have been orchestrated to avoid a backlash
against UMNO at the ballot box.
Ambiga
Sreenavasan, head of the opposition-linked Bersih
2.0 reform movement, told Asia Times Online after
the verdict that "as a lawyer I am pleased to see
the upholding of the law and to have a decision
that makes sense. I have always believed this was
a political prosecution and it is alarming to see
the court being used to bring down political
opponents."
The verdict was viewed as a
surprise by none other than Malaysian politics
eminence grise and former long-time prime minister
Mahathir Mohamed, who said, "I'm surprised that he
was not found guilty. This shows that there was no
government conspiracy against him before."
Others believe the case may have been
manufactured to distract the opposition from its
earlier Anwar-led drive in 2008 to unseat UMNO
through parliamentary defections, which for
various reasons failed to materialize. Anwar's
Pakatan Rakyat made historic inroads at the 2008
polls, winning five out of the country's 13
federal states. UMNO, which lost its decades-long
two-thirds parliamentary majority at that poll,
has since recaptured control of one of those
states, Perak.
Renegade reformer Anwar, a former student leader, began his
political career as a Mahathir protege before an
estrangement over governance and economic and
financial policies in 1998 saw him take up the
reins of de facto opposition leader. That was a
role that Malaysia's opposition believes prompted
corruption and sodomy charges, widely perceived as
politicized, against Anwar at that time. He was
sentenced in 1999 to a six-year jail term on
corruption charges and in 2000 to nine years in
prison for sodomy. A federal court in 2004
reversed the sodomy conviction.
Anwar
spearheaded the late 1990s drive for reform, or
reformasi, amid the backdrop of the 1997-1998
Asian financial crisis and the end of the 32-year
Suharto dictatorship in neighboring Indonesia. He
has been consistently outspoken about the cronyism
and nepotism that has come to define UMNO's
decades-long rule. After his jail term, Anwar's
wife Azizah fronted the opposition coalition's
historic success at the 2008 election, which has
blunted the UMNO-led government's previous ability
to railroad legislation through a rubber-stamp
legislature.
Whether or not Monday's
verdict makes the prospect of a history-making
Anwar-led, non-BN government more or less likely,
is not yet clear. Anwar can now run for election
as a charismatic, reform-minded alternative to
incumbent Najib Razak. Najib greeted Monday's
verdict as evidence that Malaysia's judiciary is
independent and free from government influence -
contrary to Anwar's and various human-rights
groups' views.
"The case against Anwar was
politically motivated and plagued with
irregularities," the New York-based Human Rights
Watch said in a statement released after the
verdict. "During the trial, the prosecution
refused to turn over key evidence as required by
the Malaysian criminal procedure code, including
its witness list and witness statements, notes by
the doctors who examined [the alleged sodomy
victim] at Kuala Lumpur Hospital, pharmacists'
worksheets and notes on DNA testing and analysis,
and closed-circuit television recordings from the
condominium guardhouse where the alleged sodomy
took place."
The government's
counter-statement landed in journalists' inboxes
mere minutes after the verdict was read, with
Information Minister Rais Yatim saying, "Malaysia
has an independent judiciary and this verdict
proves that the government does not hold sway over
judges' decisions. The current wave of bold
democratic reforms introduced by Prime Minister
Najib Razak will help extend this transparency to
all areas of Malaysian life."
Skeptics -
and Malaysia's conspiracy-prone electorate - might
say that the verdict points directly to government
interference given that the decision has "deprived
the opposition of an emotive issue that they could
milk for sympathy and point towards institutional
weakness in the system", according to Ibrahim
Suffian, head of the Merdeka polling organization.
Yet Najib might feel he has Anwar and the
opposition on the back-foot. After a clumsy and
heavy-handed crackdown on the Bersih 2.0 protest
last July, when around 20,000 people took to the
streets of Kuala Lumpur seeking reform of what
they described as a bent electoral system, Najib
turned on his heels and pledged a series of
reforms to some of Malaysia's more stringent laws
- including the Internal Security Act, which
allows for detention without trial - on the eve of
Malaysia's independence day celebrations last
September.
More broadly, some experts of
Malaysian politics believe the verdict could
ultimately improve the country's democratic
prospects.
Bridget Welsh, a political
science academic at Singapore's Management
University, said the outcome "will make elections
even more competitive as both sides will have to
focus beyond personal attacks". Merdeka's Suffian
adds that, with the trial now out of the way, the
political discussion can move away from
navel-gazing and towards substantive policy issues
as both sides try to sway voters in advance of the
election.
Simon Roughneen is a
foreign correspondent. His website is
www.simonroughneen.com.
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